Heidi was probably afraid she would look dumber than she did the first time around, which would be tough to do. Dave... He fills the Colby/Ethan slot, and they were a lot more memorable than him, I guess. I can't stand any of them, but what the hay.

Regarding ratings, it's all done through Nielsen families (the PeopleMeters and the old journals, combined), extrapolated out. Sure, they have other ways to get the data (TiVo, for example, knows everything you do on your box), but nothing is official except Nielsen.

If they say that 5 minutes into the SuperBowl, 24 million people changed the station, then what they REALLY mean is that 5 minutes into the SuperBowl, 240 Nielsen families changed the station, and that means that on average, 24 million viewing households did, too.

If they say that 5 minutes into the SuperBowl, 24 million people changed the station, then what they REALLY mean is that 5 minutes into the SuperBowl, 240 Nielsen families changed the station, and that means that on average, 24 million viewing households did, too.

Thanks John, that's a little bit clearer. Excuse my nick but...what exactly is a Nielsen family? And how is it possible for 240 families to represent 24 million, isn't that a bit...well you know, too small a sample size to generalize over such a huge population?

We were a Neilsen household back in May, I think. It was really disappointing as it was between Survivor and TAR and those are about the only shows we watch regularly besides the news and the Weather Channel.

BUT, there was space at the end to write in shows that you normally watched, but didn't that week, so I gave them an earful about Survivor and TAR.

I'm not sure how we were selected, but I seem to recall it was based on our phone number.

A Nielsen family is a household selected by Nielsen Media Research Company. There is approximately one household for every 103,000 televisions in the US. They aren't allowed to tell anyone they're Nielsen families, and they are asked to perform their normal television viewing habits.

The sets either have the new PeopleMeters on them, where every time you change the channel, you have to hit a button to tell the box who's watching the TV (there's even a button for "guests"), or the family has to keep a detailed journal of what they're watching, who's watching it, etc. These journals are then sent in on a regular basis.

Obviously, the new PeopleMeters are much more accurate than the old journal system.

Being a Nielsen family during "sweeps week" is extremely important, because advertisers use "sweeps weeks" to determine ad rates for networks and shows for the rest of the season.

When we were a Nielsen family back in May, we had the journal, one for each tv (3), with a column for each member of the family (4). We had to fill it out for a week. It was kind of a pain, but we (really me) tried to do it faithfully. We also had to fill out a brief profile on each family member.

I don't recall not being able to tell anyone we were a Nielsen family. That would make sense during sweeps weeks though, so that the viewer doesn't get bribed by networks, producers, etc.

This is sort of off topic, but did anyone ever see that episode of Roseanne, where they were a Neilson family, and she wouldn't let anyone watch anything other than the discovery and learning channels, because she wanted them to look smart and sophisticated? I never really liked that show, but I thought that was funny.